Counsel for Getting There - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 161

Put simply, interactive systems perpetually organize themselves, with infi-
nite novelty (biophysical principle 8), to a critical state in which a minor event
can start a chain reaction that leads to destabilization and collapse, such as
that of a forest following a fire. Following the disruption, the system will
begin reorganizing toward the next critical state (e.g., forest succession), and
so on indefinitely (biophysical principle 13).
Perhaps the most outstanding evidence that an ecosystem is subject to con-
stant change and ultimate disruption, rather than existing in a static balance
(biophysical principle 14), comes from studies of naturally occurring external
factors that dislocate ecosystems. For a long time, ecologists failed to con-
sider influences outside ecosystems. Their emphasis was on processes inter-
nal to an ecosystem even though what was occurring inside was driven by
what was happening outside.
Climate appears to be foremost among these factors. By studying the
record laid down in the sediments of oceans and lakes, scientists know that
climate has fluctuated wildly over the last 2 million years, and the shape of
ecosystems with it—witness what is going on today around the world. The
fluctuations take place not only from eon to eon but also from year to year
and season to season and at every scale in between; thus, the configuration
of ecosystems is continually creating different landscapes in a particular
area through geological time (biophysical principles 8 and 9).
Lesson 6: Favor Biophysical Effectiveness over Economic Efficiency
As an economy grows, natural capital, such as air, soil, water, timber, and
marine fisheries, has inexorably been reallocated to human use via the mar-
ketplace, where economic efficiency rules. The conflict between economic
growth and the conservation and maintenance of natural-resource systems
is a clash between the economic ideals of efficiency. and the realities of bio-
physical effectiveness , a distinction we have repeatedly stressed.
This economically driven divergence creates a conundrum, because tra-
ditional forms of active conservation require money, which, in the United
States, is highly correlated with income and wealth. Therefore, the unfortu-
nate question that arises in one form or another is as follows: Can we afford to
protect the environment? That inappropriate question notwithstanding, the
conservation and maintenance of biodiversity in all its forms will ultimately
require the cessation of economic growth as perpetrated today. Perhaps, with
wisdom, we could spend less rather than more in the strict economic sense,
in ways that might increase both effectiveness as well as some appropriately
defined version of efficiency.
Hereafter, the ultimate challenge will be first and foremost to maintain
biodiversity, especially in the wake of globalization, because the number of
threatened species is related to per capita, gross national product in five tax-
onomic groups in over 100 countries. Birds are the only taxonomic group in
which numbers of threatened species decreased throughout industrialized